All posts tagged video game technology

so there has been a lack of posting for a lot of reasons, mainly because i’m playing skyrim. anyway. sometimes i come up for air and oh. my. god. how COOL is retronaut? i fucking LOVE that site. love. it. here’s a quick and dirty post about the evolution of video game controllers.

let me be clear: i do not advocate piracy. i just want to watch tv on my ps3. that being said, here’s my beef: the ps3 browser has a lot of problems. mainly it hates flash, but there’s other issues too. since sony took away the ability to run linux, i can’t even find a nerdy way around it.

here’s the back story. i moved into an actual apartment building recently, and i had a revelation: i love being an adult. the one drawback of being an adult? paying for your own cable.

before my real place, i had been renting basements. my feelings on it are a mixed bag – on the one hand, it’s cool in the summer, plus it’s generally cheap, with most places throwing in laundry to boot. on the other… it’s damp, lots of bugs, and generally dark. it’s pretty much like living in a cave. however, here’s another bonus about toronto basement living: it usually comes with free cable. landlords love young business professionals who want to live in the basement.

in my real, adult home, me having cable makes no sense at all. i watch global, cp24 / citypulse and sometimes ctv. these are basic cable services and you get them for free. other than that, i used to have the food network playing all the time. is this one channel worth $90 a month? no. fuck no, if we’re opting for honesty. so i don’t get cable. i kind of miss it, to be honest and i have never been faced with this situation. so i turn to online, since sites like global and the food network have feeds going on. it’s always after the fact though, which is becoming increasingly annoying.

what does this have to do with the ps3, you ask? well it’s really quite simple. i could watch tv on a computer screen, or i could take advantage of the much-balleyhooed ‘media center’ bullshit the ps3 spits out and make it play on my giant tv. [if you still don’t get it, please go play in traffic. ]

one of the posters on the playstation board made a good point: most people watch tv online because it’s free. some do it to forgo the ads, but in general it’s the allure of free. tv stations bitch about the ads all the time, how they need them to run. a live feed would STILL let the commercials run, and let people watch for free. look at that! more winnings!

i don’t know about you, but sometimes technology pisses me off. sometimes it goes too far, and crosses lines that i make up. siliconera reported recently that sony is working on what they’re calling ‘degradable video game demos’. now, while the more optimistic among you may applaud sony, those of us whose benefit plans do not include trips to the optometrist for impractically tinted rose glasses know that this is a steaming pile of shit in the mouths of our online game accounts.

sony’s plans are to let you download or purchase full or nearly-complete copies of their new games. then, after either timed or progress-based checkpoints, they start removing features. think along the lines of fewer and fewer cars in a racing game, less powerful weapons in a fps, that kind of thing.

al gore is going to hate sony

now, while in concept this sounds a little interesting, it ultimately crosses the line for me. here’s why.

space: i, like most of the world, do not have an unlimited amount of free space on my ps3’s hard drive. at least once a week, i have to clear out all the shit that weighs it down. i play a lot of games at once. most gamers too. your hard drive is gonna fill up damn fast if you’ve got a few games on there.

the time factor: i often download a demo only to play it four days later. sometimes i play it, and play it again weeks later. it’s because i have this thing called a ‘life‘. slap a time delay on a demo, something designed to make it worse? thanks for making an efforts to fuck up the playing experience.

sony marketing fail: traditional demos are quick sound bites of a game, designed to hook you in. love the demo? run out and buy it. feeling a little meh about it? rent it at your local video store. if you decide you love it, you aren’t going to make a separate trip to a game shop, and the likelihood of picking the game up at a video shop after you rent it is huge. plus, video stores are like candy stores for gamers, as mega chains often offer mega discounts, especially around the holidays.

trophies: if you play through a regular game demo, you like it, you buy it. you don’t invest that much time into it since it’s a demo. after you buy it, you can start to work on your trophy collection.

bloated whale syndrome: games are HUGE. i don’t want to have to delete my game save of something like fallout 3 game of the year edition to make room for something that turns out to be a waste of time. jericho, for example, was far too creepy for me to even keep in my house. i would have been pissed if i had to delete game saves for that download!

environment impact: as al gore is constantly banging on about, the planet is in trouble. a lot, in fact. say, for the sake of argument, sony goes with making it a physical copy you can buy anywhere. canada has a population of over 33 million people. if even half of them play video games, we’re in trouble. you’re looking at about 15 million discarded demos – for one game. if those gamers pick up three demos, there’s 45 million discarded discs. it goes on exponentially from there.

piracy: i feel like i’ve listed enough reasons, but i had to mention this. sony’s handed pirates a gift-wrapped bundle of love. well done.